A mutt's blatherings about race, music, politics, people, and various geek things.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Push-Up for Your Health

The New York Times brings us this article about the value of push-ups. The gist of it is that emphasizing cardiovascular health is not sufficient for overall health. As we age, we need to have muscular and skeletal strength for many reasons. For instance, we need to be able to get up and down from chairs, but also need to be able to break our inevitable falls with our hands and arms, and then we need to be able to get up from the ground when we do fall.

...a 40-year-old woman should be able to do 16 push-ups and a man the same age should be able to do 27. By the age of 60, those numbers drop to 17 for men and 6 for women.

If you can't do enough of them, you can start out easy by trying them at an angle. lean against a wall to start out, then try a table. Over time, you should be able to move your angle down so you gradually get closer and closer to being horizontal.